The Greek beta and German eszett characters are historically and typographically distinct
the verdict
SUPPORTED
the evidence backs this
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
2 sources for · 0 against
Peer-reviewed literature demonstrates that the German eszett and the Greek beta are distinct characters, and confusing them in scientific literature constitutes a typographical error.
Abstract
One of the most prominent neurodegenerative diseases is Alzheimer’s disease (AD), one cause of which is the extracellular aggregation of amyloid-beta (Aβ). Some literature related to AD has represented the Greek letter β with the German letter Eszett (ß), resulting in the formation of a non-existent compound, amyloid-Eszett(Aß). This study aimed to quantify the AD-related literature in the Web of Science Core Collection carrying a mention of this false positive. A search on November 22, 2022 revealed 134 results. The highest incidence of false positives per year was observed in 2012 (41 cases). The journal with the highest incidence of amyloid-ß was the Journal of Neurochemistry (nine times), most cases (58) were found in Wiley journals, while authors with a US affiliation accounted for most (38) false positives. A Scopus search on the same date revealed 327 false positives, highest in 2020 (50 cases), most in Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (34 times), and most frequently by corresponding authors with a US affiliation (92 times). This erroneous substitution of a Greek letter (in Aβ) by a German one (Aß), despite giving a non-existent compound, will likely not change the underlying scientific conclusions of the affected papers, although errata might be useful to enlighten others, including metadata managers and journal copyeditors, so as not to repeat the same mistake.
Abstract
The Escherichia coli beta (β)-glucuronidase gene ( GUS ), coded for by the uidA gene, is a popular reporter gene in plant genetic transformation experiments. As a result of a typographic-type error, leading to confusion between Eszett (uppercase ẞ; lowercase ß), a German special character, and Greek lowercase beta (β), some published papers claimed to have used Eszett (ẞ/ß)-glucuronidase, which does not exist. Attention was paid to the 114 false positive entries, i.e., ẞ/ß-glucuronidase, that were detected on PubMed on July 6, 2021. From the 114 entries, 81 (71.1%) were in papers in the field of plant science. After screening 79 of the full texts, the error was quantified in the article’s location. The error was detected in 100% of abstracts on PubMed and also in 100% of the abstracts on the original journal/publisher websites, while 62.0% of papers had this error in the text (once or multiple times). The origin of these errors is unclear. Given that there are approximately 4000, 1100 and 10,600 hits for this false positive on sciencedirect.com, Springer Link, and Google Scholar, respectively, the quantification of this error based on PubMed suggests that a large and thorough quantitative post-publication analysis of papers claiming erroneously to have used non-existent Eszett (ẞ/ß)-glucuronidase is needed. Importantly, where possible, those errors should be corrected.
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